Seriously, I stayed away because of this.
@ActivitiesGuy to summarize, because you’ve made me think about this more, removing the EC would magnify the issues we see from state to state. Therefore, adding an EC statewide would remove the disproportionate power that an individual city may have.
Thoughts?
Would it not be possible to keep the senate electoral votes per state given to the winner of the state, which would give the weight to smaller states that you guys keep mentioning while distributing the rest of the electoral votes by congressional district, while giving people/districts in lopsided states a voice?
I side more with activities guy on this because so much of our politics is decided in few swing states, but acknowledge small states (like Montana mentioned above) still benefit from the EC.
That was a ridiculous run on sentence, but on my phone so just going to have to deal with it.
I understand what you’re saying that Portland ends up effectively making all of the decision for Oregon in statewide elections…but that’s not an argument for the Electoral College as part of a national election - that’s an argument against it! Because it means that Portland’s vote is (most likely) going to dictate how all of Oregon’s electoral votes go. Likewise, NYC drives how 100% of New York’s electoral votes are spent, even though parts of the state have much different interests. If the concern is that you want voters outside the densely populated areas to have their voices heard…isn’t the Electoral College part of the problem?
I understand that you’re worried large cities would have disproportionate weight in a national popular vote election - but this already can happen! New York City can swing all of NY State electoral votes; LA and the other big cities can swing all of California’s votes; and so on. With those states carrying a huge number of electoral votes (only slightly mitigated by the 2 Senate electoral votes per state) it’s actually possible for a couple of large cities to control the election even with the EC in place. Actually, you can argue that the EC facilitates this ability rather than limits it, since it allows one or two large cities to swing their entire state’s electoral votes.
Let me try to break this down further with three fictional states and round numbers:
Big State (50 electoral votes) has a population of 10 million, of whom 5 million live in Empire City and the remaining 5 million live on farms scattered throughout the state. Empire City votes hard for the Dingo Party, with 80% of the people (4 million) voting Dingo and 20% (1 million) voting for the Goober Party. The rest of the state is a little more divided, say 40% (2 million) Dingo Party and 60% (3 million) Goober Party. The state total, then, had 6 million votes cast for the Dingo Party and 4 million votes cast for the Goober Party. The heavy concentration of Dingo Party voters from Empire City was enough to win a majority and send all 50 electoral votes to the Dingo Party.
Medium State (20 electoral votes) has a population of 4 million, mostly in rural areas. They heavily favor the Goober Party, voting 75% Goober (3 million) and 25% Dingo (1 million). All 20 electoral votes will go to the Goober Party.
Little State (10 electoral votes) has a population of 2 million, also mostly in rural areas. They vote 100% Goober Party.
Total there were 7 million ballots cast for the Dingo Party and 9 million votes cast for the Goober Party. The majority of communities in our little three-state country favored the Goober Party; but the preponderance of Dingo Party supporters in the biggest city were enough to send Big State to the Dingo Party, and since Big State has more electoral votes than the other two states, that was enough to override the other two states. This would NOT have happened without the Electoral College, though.
Now scale this up a little bit. If the 10 smallest states by population voted 100 percent Goober Party, but the largest state (by population) in the country would go 60-40 for the Dingo Party (because Empire City leans so heavily Dingo Party, even if the rest of their state supports the Goober Party) the Big State can cancel out all 10 little states in the Electoral College even if it’s a significant popular vote edge to the Goober Party on the total count.
Point is, guys, the EC doesn’t necessarily protect the interests of “rural” areas as well as it could.
If we don’t like the national popular vote solution, I also like Drew’s suggestion…
…which would still preserve the slight tilt towards the less-populous states while slightly opening things up for the distribution of votes to be somewhat more representative of what’s actually going on within a state. If Texas as a whole is deep red but Austin is heavily blue, then most of Texas’ electoral votes will go red, but the votes from Austin congressional districts can go blue; conversely, if NYC is deep blue but rural upstate NY is red, the NYC votes can go blue while rural upstate NY voters can still be heard. And as noted, each state can leave the two “Senate” electoral votes with the overall winner of the state.
This is basically the Maine/Nebraska system, just apply it to every state.
Thumbs up to @Drew1411 & @ActivitiesGuy for giving me something to mull over
Anyone see the leaked photo of bill Clinton?
No, what is it?
Link?
The real problem is depending on the demographics there will always be one side at a disadvantage. With the example you gave it sounds like D would win 100% of the time with the EC and Rural would win 100% of the time with either the national popular vote OR the district method.
Scroll down several posts to the one from redacted LOL
That’s because I intentionally strained the parameters (only three states, only one with a large city in it) to make the point easier to understand…which is this:
The Electoral College model does not actually “make sure small states aren’t marginalized” like we keep reading; the math simply does not support this. Above, @countingbeans expressed the concern that New York City’s large population would give them more voting power than the entire state of Montana in a national popular vote…but that’s still true in the Electoral College model! Actually, it’s worse, because the huge bloc of NYC means they can (potentially) steer all of New York state’s 29 electoral votes in the same direction, dwarfing the three electoral votes from Montana. That’s a whole lot more unequitable than a deep-red Montana and a light-blueish New York State’s popular vote pooled together, or a by-Congressional-district model which would at least somewhat more proportionally allocate the electors.
It’s a math problem, guys.
And you’re blatantly ignoring how that problem changes, for the worse, without the EC.
You’re taking the situation as static, it isn’t.
And yes NYC bones the rest of the STATE. You’re advocating for a system where NYC can (and will) bone an entire NATION.
But again, this is an entirely 100% moot conversation. The EC isn’t going anywhere. No small state will vote for it.
No, it doesn’t. Please illustrate to me, using numbers, how that changes for the worse without the EC.
NYC can’t actually bone the entire nation, at least not any more than it already can with the Electoral College. Right now, a large city’s ability to dominate the entire block of Electoral College votes for their respective state provides the large city more leverage over the national election than they would have under a proportional-allotment or a by-Congressional-district system.
Please refer to the example with NY and Montana:
Reducing this to just the two states, NY going to the Democrats by a narrow margin (driven entirely by NYC alone) while Montana stays deep red already lets that single large city have a disproportionately large say in the national election. The Electoral College exacerbates this problem, it doesn’t help it.
Had to come out of exile for one quick post about the EC v. Popular vote debate:
As you can see, the EC redistributes voting power to smaller states, generally.
Right, but that’s because of the EC feature where the total number of electoral votes = the number of reps in the House (totally proportional to the population) plus the number of reps in the Senate (two for every state), which does build in a slight bonus in voting power for the smaller states.
However, I would argue that this slight-protection-of-small-states-by-giving-them-a-few-extra-electoral-votes is ultimately outweighed by the ability of large cities to steer an entire state’s bloc of electoral votes in one direction. On the aggregate level this is a net increase in leverage for big “cities” (if not for big “states”) to carry disproportionately large weight in presidential elections.
sigh…
Right now NYC controls about 11% of the election power in the country, because it controls the state. So every Democrat knows it can basically ignore the state and it’s going to be 11% closer to victory, and can spend money and time in states much less likely to go for them.
Republicans know (and it’s been shown, time and time again) that trying to get the rest of the state to outvote the city isn’t going to work, so any significant time spent there is a waste. So they spend a lot more in less for-sure blue states.
Take away the 29 EC limit on NYC influence.
Now the republicans need to spend massive amounts of money in NYC AND upstate in order to only loss by 10-15% rather than the 20% they normally would. That means they start to pander to the urban centers, well the Democrats already do… So 8-10 years later, all the legislation and regulation is based on urban centers. All policy is a reflection of trying to get the urban vote to 50/50 because anything less than 62-38 can’t be overcome by the rural vote.
Multiply this by the biggest 6 or 10 cities and there you have it. If you don’t live in those cities, no one actually has to pander to you in any real way as it is a waste of resources.
Politicians don’t care about you or me, the parties dont’ care about anything other than votes. And will openly say a policy is bad, but people ask for it, so they pass it, to win votes… (Moonbat and CA min wage for example.)
“Get out the vote” efforts become more important than actual policy.
Look, I’m not trying to be a dick here, but you just don’t get the process.
It’s known NYC bones the state, and the Democrat will get the EC tally from the state. This is known. Therefore resources can be allocated accordingly, which just so happens to be us plebs in the sticks and “fly over” country.
That means republicans “give up” on NYS, and focus on trying to represent the plebs, help the plebs. This is actually good for us plebs. And having to string together multiple pleb filled states in order to combat the known haul from NY by the left is even more helpful to us plebs because more and more of us will actually be listened to.
Without the EC, the “known” is gone, and the republicans HAVE to fight and spend massive amounts of money in urban areas where they aren’t going to do better than 60-40 at best in contemporary American climate.
That means us plebs get ignored not just by democrats, but by the republicans too. Because they don’t have the money to kiss all the asses, and they can’t just chalk up urban areas to losses anymore.
^I do want to pursue this more…I just need to shut up and get some (actual) work done. I’ll try to revisit this a little more later.
I want to do a post about tax policy, if you stick around.
So, stop being so stubborn and stick around.
In this specific example not having the EC would diminish NYC influence. As you say, the 29 electoral votes is powerful. I count it as (29/538) 5.4%. Where the population of NYC is only 2.63% (8.4/319).
If you take away the EC limit, NYC can only influece 2.63% of the vote and all the rural areas in NY which are usually ignored and drowned out by the city actually get a voice.
This already happens on the state level, but only in swing states. What would change is voters in other states can actually still have influence.
So you don’t understand the situation either?
270 to win right?
29/270 = 11%. NY is about 99.9% going Dem.
That puts the Dems at such an advantage the Republicans HAVE to focus on the smaller states to have a chance. Between NY, CA & MA the dems have 35% of the votes they need to win, from states that aren’t flipping anytime soon.
This allows the republicans to spend much less there (not nothing) and forces them to string together smaller states in order to compete.
This literally forces people to pay attention to the smaller guys.
They already do. If they don’t like the process, best of luck to them, it isn’t going to change because they are too much of a special snowflake to try and win over the people around them.
Nothing more entitled and spoiled brat esk than thinking the entire system should be blown up to cater to you.